Theme

Liberty

Freedom as a legal condition, a moral claim, and a daily habit. Several of these lines were spoken by people who did not yet have the liberty they described.

1. One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.Simone de BeauvoirThe Second Sex
2. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.Frederick DouglassWest India Emancipation speech
3. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning
4. Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.Benjamin FranklinReply to the Governor of Pennsylvania
5. I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.Nathan HaleReported last words
6. Give me liberty, or give me death!Patrick HenrySpeech to the Virginia Convention
7. I, too, sing America.Langston HughesI, Too
8. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of…Thomas JeffersonThe Declaration of Independence
9. Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.John F. KennedyInaugural Address
10. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.Martin Luther King Jr.Address at the March on Washington
11. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.Ursula K. Le GuinSpeech at the National Book Awards
12. That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Abraham LincolnThe Gettysburg Address
13. You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.Malcolm XSpeech in New York
14. It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.Nelson MandelaStatement from the dock at the Rivonia Trial
15. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.John Stuart MillOn Liberty
16. These are the times that try men’s souls.Thomas PaineThe American Crisis
17. The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.Rosa ParksRosa Parks: My Story
18. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.Jean-Jacques RousseauThe Social Contract
19. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.Elizabeth Cady StantonDeclaration of Sentiments
20. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.Henry David ThoreauCivil Disobedience
21. Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian War
22. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.Sojourner TruthSpeech at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron
23. I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.Harriet TubmanRemarks recalled from her lectures
24. Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.William TyndaleJohn Foxe, Actes and Monuments
25. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.George WashingtonFarewell Address
26. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.Mary WollstonecraftA Vindication of the Rights of Woman
27. A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.Virginia WoolfA Room of One’s Own

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